Fan Jinghua: A Nightmare

　　A Nightmare

I was locating my home
which I remembered was numbered 1305,
and I understood what it might stand for:
either it was the fifth door of a bungalow in a terrace,
or a unit on the thirteen floor in an apartment building.
It was a cloudy afternoon, early or late summer,
in my alma mater middle school,
so I guessed that I must be a teacher and a former student.
Walking on a cement road between rows of homes,
whose residents should have been all familiar faces,
former teachers and schoolmates and present colleagues,
I saw an old classmate whose parents had been our teachers
and the classmate she married to was not my friend,
perhaps we had harbored a kind of puppy love when in the classroom.
I saw her doing housework behind the window,
maybe by the kitchen basin,
and her face flickered twice and smiled once at my waving hand;
behind beans and towel gourds, it looked like
a picture in a flower photo-frame;
but when I walked to the door and asked for her,
her parents came to tell that it was not a right time for her to talk.
My throat was dry and difficult like drought land,
and I asked for her husband,
knowing that they might know where my home was;
but I was told her husband was no at home, although
I heard his whistle.
I backed away from their row, which I found was number 9,
so I walked on, wishing the rows were numbered in a lineal logic.
Four rows further to the north, I did find Row 13,
the last row of bungalows before a piece of wasteland,
but there were only even numbers in chalk between those doors.
This did not much too surprised me, as my premonition
had before the search warned me of the weirdness of my situation.
To the other end of the bungalow district, however,
there was one towering apartment building.
so with the vague faith that that might be where I really lived,
I was there.
Upon entering the empty porch, I pressed the button for Up,
and found the lift did not open but it faced me with a rectangle hole
about a width of one meter less and a height of one meter plus.
Big enough for me to enter.
I came out at the right floor, standing straight
and finding myself among a chaotic scattering of books and papers,
which was amazingly not my home in my memory
but all the litter was definitely mine.
I went to the window and looked out
and was horrified to find that the room was solitarily
floating in the mid-air like a hot balloon
away from the building it should have been soldered into;
I saw the bungalows down there as if half-drowned.
Then, I realized that my room was on the missing 13th floor
of superstitious erasure, a collective unmentionable,
and then I woke up to write it out,
and I had to close my eyes to recall the detailed vividness.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　August 26, 2007 p.m.

Ps:
This is a genuine dream I had sometime in the morning today (August 26, 2007), which I’ve tried hard to transcribe as faithfully as I can.


　　　一个梦魇

我只记得我家的门牌是1305，
我知道这意味着十三排五号或者十三楼五单元，
但我却忘了到底是哪排房子或哪栋楼。
那是一个初夏或者夏末的午后，多云转阴，
在中学母校，因此我应该是毕业后重返母校的教师。
我走在左右都是住家的水泥路上，
那些住户应该都是一些熟悉的面孔，
从前的老师或同学校友、现在的同事，
我看到一个老同学，她的父母曾是我们的老师，
而她所嫁的同学不是我的朋友，或许因为
我们同坐课堂时曾有过未曾明说的初恋。
我看到她的脸在窗后，或许在厨房的水池前，
她的脸闪了两次，还对着我的挥手微微一笑，
透过房前园子里的豆角和丝瓜，她的脸犹如花边相框中的照片。
当我走到门前，她父母告诉我此刻她不便说话。
我的嗓子干涩得难以出声，犹如一片燥裂的农田，
但是我还是要求见她的丈夫，
心想他们应该知道我的家在哪里；
而我被告知她丈夫不在，虽然我听到他在里屋吹着口哨。
退离那排房子时，我看到那排的标号是9，
于是我继续向前，希望数字按照逻辑顺序排列；
向北走了四排，果然看到第十三排，
一小片荒芜空地之前的最后一排住家，
然而那些门之间的墙上只有石灰刷出的偶数号码。
这竟然并没有令我吃惊，因为我寻找之前已有不祥的预感，
明白我的处境绝非如此简单，肯定有着难以言说的怪诞。
在平房区的另一边，有一栋很高的公寓，
我隐约地相信我住的地方应该就在那里。
进了空无一人的门厅，按了“向上”的电梯按钮，
电梯下来了，却没有打开，门上有一个焊枪切开的洞，
一个不到一米宽不止一米高的长方形，足够我低头进入。
我适时走出电梯，站直了身，就已经站在
一堆堆凌乱散落的书本纸张中间。
令我惊异的是，那肯定不是我记忆中的家，
但所有的物件肯定都属于我。
走到窗前，我恐慌地意识到
我的屋子正孤独的飘浮在半空中，犹如一只热气球，
抽离了原本的楼层，十二与十四楼之间；
我低头看到平房全都好像半淹在一片汪洋中。
这时候我突然醒悟，原来我的屋子属于那不见的十三楼，
被迷信从顺序中抹消，一件集体的不可提及之事。
我醒来，将这个梦写出，
而我不得不闭着眼睛才能将种种细节重现于眼前。
　　　　　　　　　　　　2007年8月26日晚

后记：
这是今天上午（2007年8月26日）的一个真实的梦，
我也尽量真实地记述下来。